August's Visitors Part One

So. As I said in my post the other day, my mom and step dad came out to visit us for a little over a week this month. They got in on Tuesday the 3rd, and we couldn't have been happier:

Wednesday morning, Josh and Matt took my step dad on a two day fishing trip. Apparently my dad did pretty well since he caught most of the fish (the other guy in the picture is Matt, Josh's friend from work - it was his boat they went out on):

After they got back, they spent a good part of the morning on Friday cutting, and washing, and trimming, and vacuum sealing the many, many pounds of fish they caught. The boys were more than happy to supervise the process to make sure it all went well:

Saturday saw a little break in the rain (for a few hours anyway) and so I took my older boys and my parents to the zoo. And no trip to the zoo would be complete without popcorn and kit kats:


Sunday afternoon, Josh took my dad and the older boys on a hike down to the river, while my mom, Finn and I stayed home and made dinner:


Monday morning we took advantage of another break in the rain (I'll post about the rain we've been having later) and took the boys to the playground for a little bit:

That afternoon, after nap time, I took my parents and the older boys onto post to check out the airplanes and to get some groceries from the commissary:

On Tuesday, my parents took a train ride from Anchorage to Whittier, then took a day cruise around:

As you can see it was a chilly day. They did get to see a bunch of glaciers as well as some sea lions (the sea lions are the black dots on the ice block in the water):

Wednesday morning it was raining (again) so we tried out The House of Bounce in town. It was pretty cool. There was a bunch of blow-up jumping things in there for the kids (and the parents!) to jump around on. The boys had a blast, and I think Josh had a fun time too, even though he banged himself up pretty well:

While the kids were napping, the rain stopped, so I took my parents to the Heritage Museum. We got there just in time to see some authentic dancing:

There was also a very rare event going on that day. Apparently four of the tribes that are represented throughout the museum had agreed to share a house at the museum (outside is a pathway that leads around a lake, and along the path are different Alaskan house types to go into and see how they live, etc). To commemorate this big deal of a thing, each tribe commissioned a local (to them) artist to carve a totem pole to represent their tribe. Then, each day last week one of the totem poles was raised in the house. It was a pretty big deal, and we were pretty excited to have been there to see it:

They said the totem weighed a little over 900 pounds. It wasn't very tall, but it was wide. And thick. Very cool.

And then Thursday my parents left to go back to New Jersey. All in all, it was a great trip, and we had a great time. Thank you Mom and Dad for coming!

PS...for those interested I will eventually get the pictures up on Flickr, but there are over 200 of them to sort through, so it might be awhile before that happens. Until then, see ya!